What is your FIRE number? Your expected FIRE expenses?

[ertyu]

Jacob, based on the math, you FIREd at 4.67% SWR.. I think that should be highlighted more often

I guess I feel people on this forum should have a bit more willingness to FIRE early rather than waiting until they exactly their number, whether it's 4% or 3% or 2% or a million bucks.

Also note these were 2009 dollars. Stocks mkt throughs allow for up to 6% swr. Always consider swr in relation to current valuations. Retiring at the bottom of a bear market is the best timing you can possibly have, with the sequence of returns being a tailwind the whole way through the earliest, crucial post-retirement years.

[Western Red Cedar]

@7W5 - I was rereading this thread last night. Lots of great dialogue and perspectives here. Have your perspectives changed after dealing with unexpected health issues? What kind of advice would you give to younger folks who are still stashing away their apples?

[7Wannabe5]

Have your perspectives changed after dealing with unexpected health issues? What kind of advice would you give to younger folks who are still stashing away their apples?

Try to have as much great sex as you can before your body fails on you. Especially if you have any running through the woods with somebody who is inhabiting the masculine energy of the wolf type fantasies.

You can always make more money doing brain in a jar tasks even after you become physically decrepit.

[2Birds1Stone]

Touché

[7Wannabe5]

I also wouldn’t give up any of the years I spent at home with my babies for any amount of compounded interest. Or the fun and excitement I had running my own little business with my dear sister as my partner. I’m pretty much a completely fulfilled human. I just have the challenge now of figuring out how not to be in pain for the next 20 or 30 years.

[WFJ]

"Enjoy present pleasures in such a way not to injure future ones"

Seneca

[7Wannabe5]

Right, but the same holds for a future you suffering from regret as much as pain. Bedsides when better to plan on totally nerding out and making some money than the period where your body doesn’t work so well any more? When you are in pain it is more difficult to enjoy leisure than work. Makes me think that workaholics must suffer from some sort of mental or emotional pain.

[zbigi]

The question also is, how much harder is to make money nerding out as someone in their late fifties than someone in their early twenties. Employers definitely like them young...

[7Wannabe5]

@zbigi:

Well, that’s part of what makes it a potentially interesting experiment. It’s actually kind of boring to be retired at my age when everybody else is doing it. Also, I’m okay with being disabled diversity hire as long as my cubicle is within 2 minutes of a bathroom.

[zbigi]

Fingers crossed then! I'd love to hear your take on a modern corporate environment.

[Stasher]

I'm glad I clicked on the link in the Best of ERE thread to loop me back here to reread again and especially Jacob's chatting on his roots in ERE and the whole FIRE topic, especially loved the Mt Fuji analogy of how MMM's approach changed the landscape to ERE. I also noticed there was a lot of critiquing of Pete's budget in 2016 and wonder what everyone thinks of his most recent post this past month.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2025/01 ... -spending/

Back on the original topic, I hit a nice safe spot at about a Level 4 on the scale in 2017 so I left work, doing some fun random writing/photography to limit my drawdown of investments. Since then my free time allowed me to shoot for a community serving part time work position that has continued to allow me to stop drawing from savings and back to accumulation phase. I am unsure if I want to continue to do this and back to the full freedom I had from roughly 2017 to 2019 before the hobby income generating opportunities. Thus I have shifted from MMM (mostly because the forums there are hugely frivolously excess consumerism it almost feels like) back to ERE forums due to the "intellectual calculated frugality" here that I appreciate.

I'm sitting still at level 4 right now (based on household spending but situation is more a 5) and plan to really clamp down on the leaks and weaknesses in my budget. Also I want to make the most of the remaining 18 months of income based on my short term future looking plans, especially in the light of economic uncertainty (in Canada) due to the new US government. My current budget FIRE number if I keep my spending loosey goosey is $50,000 (Canadian) but I know I can drop to $40,000 easily.